Telephone answering (TA) applications currently use Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) features, which enable a user to add contacts to a Personal Address Book (PAB) system via a telephone. One problem is that when a user adds a name from the telephone, he cannot assure the accuracy of the spelling of the name, because of the inaccuracy of the ASR application feature of the PAB system for alphabetic interpretation. For example, the user may receive a voicemail message from Joe Phillips, who may be previously unidentified to the user, and who leaves a message requesting a callback (the telephone number was received from a PBX, for example, and saved in addition to the message itself). The user accesses his PAB, and initiates the addition of the new contact based on his speaking both the contact's name and the telephone number that was left as part of the message. For example, Phillips sounds the same as Philips, Fillips and Filips, and therefore the ASR may spell the name incorrectly.
Even a “smart” system may do no better than “guess” at Phillips, the most common member of the homonym group.
A user is typically a subscriber of a service that is available via the telephone. This service typically includes an ASR recognizer and a PAB, and provides for the addition of contacts to the PAB directly over telephone. When the user elects to add a new contact using the telephone he:                speaks the contact's name one or more times; and        enters at least one telephone number to be associated with the name. The number can be added verbally by the user directly, or by Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF) keypad entry or from the data saved with the message (as received from the PBX) or the number can be added later from the Internet or some other device.There are two shortcomings for the above process:        the ASR recognition that results from matching with an alphabetic representation of a name can be better than that of contacts added directly from the verbal input; and        by using a directory, e.g. a white pages, the PAB entry can be expanded with a growing variety of useful information (e.g. name spelling, address, e-mail, other telephone numbers, SMS, etc.).        
The telephone number that was added in one of the ways described earlier may not be unique to an individual, since there can be many people sharing this telephone number, e.g. a family or a company with one telephone number.
Where no name is provided, only a telephone number, current TA applications can use a directory, such as a white pages directory, based only on the telephone number that was entered. If the telephone number is found in the directory white pages, the application can insert the spelled version of the associated name into the PAB or present it to the user to approve. If many people share a number, there is no provision for differentiation between their names, and worse yet, the spelled name might not fit the contact. Where the number is for a corporation, for example, the spelled name might be that of the company as opposed to being that of the contact (the subscriber wants to have the contact's name, although it is a company telephone).
There is, therefore, a need for a PAB application that helps the user verify that the added information from an external source (e.g. a white or yellow pages) matches his contact.